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<h1>Edit</h1>

<h2>Introduction</h2>
<blockquote>
<p>Edit is an integrating (rather than integrated) development environment
for programmers, written in Java. Its most distinctive characteristic is
its use of tiled (i.e. non-overlapping) subwindows for editing multiple
files.</p>
</blockquote>

<img align="right" src="edit.jpg">

<h2>Using Edit</h2>
<blockquote>
<h3>Starting Edit</h3>
<p>The <tt>edit</tt> shell script or <tt>edit.bat</tt> batch file can be
used to start Edit; all it does is invoke <tt>java</tt> with the main
class <tt>e.edit.Edit</tt>. Edit will open a window whose size can be
configured in the file <tt>edit.properties</tt>.</p>

<h3>Keyboard Shortcuts</h3>
<p>The following hot-key combinations are availble (where C means Ctrl for PC users, and
Ctrl or Command for Mac users):</p>
<p align="center">
<table>
<tr><td>C-F</td><td>Find...</td></tr>
<tr><td>C-D</td><td>Find previous match</td></tr>
<tr><td>C-G</td><td>Find next match</td></tr>
<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td></td></tr>
<tr><td>C-L</td><td>Goto Line...</td></tr>
<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td></td></tr>
<tr><td>C-S</td><td>Save</td></tr>
<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td></td></tr>
<tr><td>C-X</td><td>Cut</td></tr>
<tr><td>C-C</td><td>Copy</td></tr>
<tr><td>C-V</td><td>Paste</td></tr>
<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td></td></tr>
<tr><td>C-B</td><td>Build project</td></tr>
<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td></td></tr>
<tr><td>C-Z</td><td>Undo</td></tr>
<tr><td>S-C-Z</td><td>Redo</td></tr>
<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td></td></tr>
<tr><td>C-W</td><td>Close window</td></tr>
</table></p>

<h3>Finding Text</h3>
<p>The 'Find' window (C-F) opens with the current selection. You can type a new
search string for interactive searching.
Pressing C-D or C-G in a text window will find the previous or next matches
of the currently selected text, without opening a find window.</p>

<h3>Going to a Line</h3>
<p>The 'Goto' window (C-L) opens with the current line number. You can type
a line number and press Return to go to that line.</p>

<h3>Moving and Closing Windows</h3>
<p>Windows can be moved by dragging their titlebars.</p>
<p>Windows can be closed by clicking the little crosses in their titlebars.
A red cross means that the file has been edited since it was last saved.
Clicking a red cross will turn it black without saving, and indicates that
you don't care about your changes. Clicking a black cross will close a
window.</p>
<p>Double-clicking on a titlebar will expand that
window at the expense of the others in the column.</p>

<h3>Building your Project</h3>
<p>The C-B key combination clears the current workspace's errors window,
and begins searching upwards from the current context until a
<tt>Makefile</tt> or <tt>build.xml</tt> is found, at which point
<tt>make</tt> or <tt>ant</tt> is invoked in that context.

<h3>Using Multiple Workspaces</h3>
<p>Along the left-hand edge of the Edit window there are four tabs,
labelled 'alpha', 'beta', 'gamma' and 'delta'. Clicking on one of these
switches to a new workspace: a fresh Edit where you can work on a different
project or whatever. This is sometimes more convenient than running
multiple copies of Edit, or opening files from multiple projects in the
same Edit workspace.</p>
</blockquote>

<h2>Configuring Edit</h2>
<blockquote>
<p>Edit has various configuration options, all of which can be set
in <tt>edit.properties</tt>.
This file is read at start-up. It's a plain text file which can be
edited with Edit itself, and which should be self-explanatory.</p>
<p>If you don't want to use Internet Explorer to open URIs, you will
need to tell Edit the location of your preferred browser.</p>
<p>You will need to tell Edit the location of your JDK documentation
to use the JavaDoc feature.</p>
</blockquote>

<h2>Extending Edit</h2>
<blockquote>
<p>The tools on the tools menu are read from the properties file.
Edit sets a few environment variables to communicate with your code.
The variable <tt>EDIT_CURRENT_FILENAME</tt> is the currently selected
text window's filename. The variable <tt>EDIT_WORKSPACE_ROOT</tt> is
set to the root directory of the current workspace.
</p>
</blockquote>

<h2>Downloading Edit</h2>
<blockquote>
<p>Edit is available as <a href="/edit.tgz">edit.tgz</a>, a file containing
both the source and the .class files. You'll need to untar everything
before you can run Edit.</p>
</blockquote>

<hr noshade>
Elliott Hughes, November 2002.
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